1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an ink jet recording head for discharging ink to thereby effect recording on a recording medium, and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of Related Art
An ink jet recording head is provided with a discharge port for discharging ink, an ink flow path for supplying the ink to the discharge port, an energy generating element provided in a portion of the ink flow path for generating energy for discharging the ink, and an ink supplying port for supplying the ink to the ink flow path.
The ink jet recording head in recent years is very small in the discharge port (hereinafter referred to as the “nozzle”) in order to realize the recording of an image of high quality and a higher speed. In contrast, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H06-312506 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H05-124206 disclose a construction in which a pillar-shaped dust catching member (filter) is formed near an ink flow path to thereby catch solid matter such as minute dust in ink and prevent the clogging of the ink flow path and a discharge port.
In the above-described construction of the conventional ink jet recording head, the minute dust in the ink can be caught by the filter, but when a bubble exists in the ink, the bubble may not in some cases be caught by the filter. Therefore, the minute bubble may sometimes come from the ink supplying port into the ink flow path and reach the vicinity of the discharge port. When the bubble reaches the vicinity of the discharge port, there is the undesirable possibility that normal discharge is not effected, for example, in case of ink discharge, the discharge direction of the ink deviates or the discharge amount of the ink changes. Also, when the bubble having reached the vicinity of the discharge port is large, for example, to such a degree as covers the energy generating element, the ink is sometimes not discharged from the nozzle.